The Brunello Cucinelli Story

With the help of the Brunello Cucinelli visual team, we have successfully transformed the A.K. Rikk’s Studio into an Umbrian styled pop-up shop – the perfect backdrop for a Fall & Winter 2016 preview. We are reminded of this article in GQ by Jake Woolf when he visited Brunello Cucinelli at Pitti Uomo earlier this year to shed some light on where the brand is going, and where it rooted from.

What’s your favorite thing about designing? Is it discovering new ways to put pieces together? Or more the details that go into a garment?
What we did here is we put together the very same stand booth you see here in advance. Before we come here, we review the outfits, and see which, say, pocket square or pattern works. We want to review the details, because see—if I remove my pocket square, my look is less chic, more normal. Just tiny details. I’ve always loved details. You see, I nearly always wear almost the very same things. But I alter the combinations slightly.

Where would you recommend that man who isn’t into clothes begin building his wardrobe?
A beautiful blazer is the starting point. You can wear it to work, to get a newspaper, to dinner, a T-shirt underneath, or a proper shirt with a tie, or anything. If you’re not wearing a jacket it doesn’t mean that you look less good, but just more sporty.

Is that knowledge of details and style something you’re born with, or can it be taught?
Well I think it’s a bit of both. You can learn and improve your knowledge, but nature also has its say. I came from a farming family, and in December, she would buy me a pair of trousers. One year, she bought me a pair of green trousers, I was eight years old. I dug a hole and I buried them. She asked, “Where are they?” and I said “Oh I don’t know.” See, I don’t like green, but we were farmers, what did I know. But now as an adult, if I actually look back at that time, I always wore light trousers, and would always ask my mother to buy me a blue blazer. But maybe I would wear denim with a blue blazer, or white white corduroy trousers. There is a part of it that is very inborn. It doesn’t matter if you are a football player, or a great basketball player, there is technique but you also need to have something inside you.

Visit the A.K. Rikk’s Studio April 20th through the 22nd and discover the beauty behind Brunello Cucinelli.